I felt the wooly texture of the rug beneath my face before I had the courage to try and open my eyes. When I did open them, the room spun as things came back into focus, so I closed them again.
I took in several deep breaths and waited for my stomach to settle before trying to focus. I had no idea how long I’d been out. It could’ve been seconds or hours. But either way, I had one hell of a headache.
I rolled onto my hands and knees and saw my phone a few feet away. I crawled toward it and checked the time, relieved to see it wasn’t yet nine. I had twenty minutes to make the briefing at the station. If I was lucky, I’d keep my coffee down the whole way there. I needed to tell Jack what had happened, and I needed to tell him fast, before Malachi had a chance to go underground for good.
I left through the back door, not caring if anyone saw me leaving, and wobbled my way back toward the front of the house. Nothing had changed. Everyone was still going about the business. And there was still a killer on the loose.
The memory of Mrs. McGowen’s murder made me want to kick myself. I’d taken one look at Malachi Graves and completely lost my senses. Why hadn’t I asked him about Mrs. McGowen? Was it because I was afraid maybe he was the killer? There was certainly more than a chance he could be. And now that I knew he’d been living in the house, he’d have to be as high up on the person of interest list as Harrison Taylor.
I didn’t notice the van parked in the driveway of Mrs. McGowen’s house until I was almost back to the Suburban. I had to get a hold of myself. At what age would I stop letting my father rattle my cage?
The van was white and non-descript, but the side door was open and I could see a mountain of equipment and cleaning supplies.
“The sheriff gave me the all-clear,” a soft, lilting voice said from behind me. It was about the most non-threatening voice I’d ever heard, but still, I jumped.
“Oh, Aoife,” I said, putting a hand to my heart. “You snuck up on me.”
Her look of confusion was understandable. She was standing plain as day in the middle of the driveway with a vacuum pack strapped to her back and a mop bucket in her hand.
Aoife Donovan, pronounced EE-fa, did crime-scene cleanup for the county. She barely came up to my shoulders and had a nice, soft look about her. Everything about her was soft. Her hair was a soft red. Her cheeks and body were softly rounded. She wasn’t overweight, but she looked like the kind of woman who could give a comfortable hug. She had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and eyes the color of Irish moss. Her looks were the only soft thing about her. She didn’t take crap from anybody. A high-profile divorce that left her pretty much destitute had toughened her up real fast.
She was dressed in a hazmat suit and had an oxygen mask hanging from her neck. Yellow industrial rubber gloves came up to her elbows and rubber fishing boots came up to her knees. She was dressed how I wish I’d been dressed the first time I’d gone into the house. Someone must’ve warned her. My guess was Jack. He had a soft spot for women who worked their tails off while trying to raise kids by themselves.
Aoife was a Bloody Mary transplant. She’d moved here from King George just after Christmas. She had a six-year-old son, a distrust of men, and a whole lot of gumption. She was about ten years older than me, and I adored her.
Jack’s secretary, Betsy Clement, had decided to retire earlier than expected, so Jack had opened up the job search to replace her. In had walked Aoife, her son in tow because she couldn’t afford to put him in daycare, and Jack had decided on the spot that whether or not she was the worst secretary on the face of the planet, she was going to be his.
Unfortunately, Betsy Clement was having a harder time retiring than she’d thought, which left Jack without a new secretary who wasn’t a hundred years old, and Aoife without a job. And she’d really needed a job.
But she hadn’t let the news get her down. She and Jack had put their heads together and made a list of all of Aoife’s job skills. Since she’d been a housewife for the twelve years she’d been married, her talents mostly lent themselves to cookie baking and house cleaning. Which was when Jack came up with the idea of having an official crime scene clean up company. After Jack had gotten done spinning the position to the council and the community, you’d have thought it was the most needed position in the state.
Aoife said after changing diapers and being thrown up on, cleaning up crime scenes was kind of anti-climactic. It was statements like that one that made me glad I was still taking Lenny Kowalski’s birth control pills. Kids were kind of gross.
“It’s a mess in there,” I said for lack of anything better.
She nodded soberly. “Reminds me of my granny’s house. You couldn’t swing a dick without hitting a cat. Half the time, I wasn’t even sure if she knew what she was putting in the oven. Cats everywhere.”
I was still caught on the swinging dick comment, so I didn’t have a lot to offer as far as replies went.
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “Good luck.”
“As long as my check doesn’t bounce I’ll clean anything,” she said. “This neighborhood is creepy as hell. It’s like someone is always watching.” Her eyes darted back and forth and I found myself looking up and down the street. It was creepy.
“Just for the record, I don’t believe one word of what Madam Scandal wrote in her column.”
“Thank you,” I said, startled. “Honestly, I’ve forgotten all about it with the murder. Maybe everyone else has too.”
“Doubtful,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But maybe you and Jack should stay out of the back seats of vehicles.”
My lips twitched. “Probably good advice.”
“Not that I blame you. My ex used to have that kind of sex appeal. When we were first married, it was hard to keep my clothes on at all. It got easier though after most of the tri-state area became familiar with the birthmark shaped like Florida on his genitals.”
I nodded in sympathy. Aoifa’s husband had gotten caught with his pants down, literally, and had ended up being the focus of several unfortunate social media memes. I hated to tell her, but it was a heck of a lot more than the tri-state area that knew Paul Donovan’s penis had paid homage to the sunshine state.
“Well, I’ve got to get to it,” she said. “Those blood stains aren’t going to clean themselves.”
I waved goodbye and got in the Suburban, and then I drove the four blocks to the Town Square. The city complex was right in the middle of the square. The courthouse was on the left, the sheriff’s office and jail in the middle, and the fire department was on the right. Parking was a nightmare no matter which building you were headed to.
I parked the Suburban in one of the spots reserved for city employees with a whole ten minutes left before the briefing started. I took a second to look in the rearview mirror and then quickly wished I hadn’t. I looked like hell. My face was still pale and there were dark circles under my eyes. I could practically see the headache radiating across my skull. Jack was going to take one look at me and know something was terribly wrong.
I got out of the Suburban and locked the door before heading into the sheriff’s office. From the outside, the city complex building looked beautiful. The architecture was Tudor, and it was a big white elephant of a building. In fact, the entire Town Square was Tudor, so it looked like a little English village. Which made sense, considering the names of the towns that made up King George County.
Where the outside was a white elephant, the inside was pure seventies revival. At least in the sheriff’s office. I walked through the double glass doors into the entry area. It was a small operation, so there was a place to process those who’d been arrested in an area on the right, and on the left was where visitors could check in. One uniformed officer manned both desks. There was a Plexiglas partition and a locked door that separated the officers from the civilians.
“Hey, Riley,” I said to the officer behind the desk. There was a young man in his early twenties handcuffed to the chair by the wall. He looked like he’d been greased from head to toe, and someone had worked him over pretty good. “Busy morning?”
“Not for me, Doc. But Lewis and Cole got called over to the Waffle Hut bright and early. It seems our friend and one of the waitresses have been having a Waffle Hut romance in the store room when it’s not busy. Only this time the storeroom door didn’t latch all the way and several angry customers came back to the kitchen to see what was taking their food so long. There was a scuffle, seeing how all those people weren’t too keen on Billy here finishing up their breakfast.”
“Understandable,” I said. “Do I want to know why he looks like he just came through the birth canal?”
Riley chuckled. “Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway. It seems Crisco is Billy’s lube of choice. The unfortunate part is that when Lewis and Cole arrived, Billy decided it was a good idea to run, but he was still mostly naked and a lot lubed up. That stuff doesn’t just come off. So when Cole tackled him to the ground, it was more like wrestling a greased pig. Cole’s been in the shower for twenty minutes. There’s a pool going around to see if he’s going to quit. Want in on it?”
“Nah, Cole won’t quit. You know how much his mom likes to see him in uniform. He’d never disappoint her like that.”
“Damn,” Riley said. “I didn’t think about that. I’m going to change my bet.”
He hit the buzzer on the door and I walked through. The walls of the bullpen were painted mint green, and the flooring transitioned to gray tile. Pairs of wooden desks sat in uniformed rows, facing each other. There were five cells used for holding back to the right in a secured area, and Jack’s office was to the left. It was a glass cube so he could see out and others could see in, but there were blinds on the windows that could be closed when privacy was needed.
I didn’t see him in there, so I made my way to the conference room toward the back. The door was open, and I stuck my head in to make sure I was in the right place. Chen and Martinez leaned against the wall, talking quietly over their coffee. There was a large, square safe sitting at one end of the conference table and several boxes of things that had been collected at the scene.
“Morning, Doc,” Martinez said. “Coffee is fresh.”
“But is it good?” I asked.
“Sheriff made it,” he said.
“In that case, I’ll have some.”
“He said he knows better than to not keep you caffeinated.”
“One of the many reasons I married him,” I said, pouring the black liquid into a Styrofoam cup.
“I’d love to hear the other reasons later,” Jack said, walking in and closing the door behind him. “There are some days I wonder if you only keep me around for my coffee making skills.”
“You’re a good cook too,” I said, making Chen and Martinez chuckle.
“You okay?” Jack asked, narrowing his eyes as he looked me over from head to toe.
“Eventful morning,” I said, very aware of the others’ curiosity.
He nodded and put a stack of files down on the table. “We’re twenty-four hours into the investigation of Rosalyn McGowen’s death. And so far, we have lots of questions and no answers. We have no murder weapon, and the only person on the street without an alibi is Harrison Taylor.”
“Should we go ahead and start looking for other jobs?” Chen asked with a snort.
“Not just yet,” Jack said. “I’ll let you know after we talk to him.” He filled Martinez and Chen in on what we’d discovered from the neighbors we’d talked to the day before. “Did you guys get any impressions on your end?” he asked.
“Monica Middleton,” Chen said automatically. “She seemed nervous while we were talking to her. She works twelve hour shifts at the hospital, but she’s off Friday through Sunday. I took it there was some estrangement between her and her husband. She said they were like ships passing in the night and they each kind of did their own thing. But it didn’t seem like she wanted us to talk to him. He was asleep while we were there. He works nights and gets home about eight. He sleeps for a couple of hours and then gets up and goes to class.”
“Katie Stein from across the street said she’s seen a man there a couple of times in the middle of the night,” Jack said. “She thinks she’s having an affair.”
After speaking with my father, I knew this information to be true, but I couldn’t say anything until I’d had a chance to talk to Jack.
“That would explain the nervousness,” Martinez said. “She kept looking toward the bedroom. But everyone else on the street seemed like normal families. They go to work. They have a consistent routine. Everyone adored Mrs. McGowen.”
“What about Abby Clearwater?” Jack asked.
Chen let out a laugh and cut her eyes to Martinez. It was impossible to miss the slight pink tinge to Martinez’s cheeks.
“You mean the hot blonde who answered the door wearing the tiniest shorts I’ve ever seen in my life and a tank top without a bra? That Abby Clearwater?” Chen slapped Martinez on the back. “He was a puddle at her feet. She was so distraught you’d have thought she’d found the body herself, and Casanova here did everything from bringing her water to offering to make her homemade soup.”
“It was the nice thing to do,” Martinez said. “My mama taught me to take care of women when they’re upset.”
“Yeah, she was so upset her hand almost got stuck slipping her number in your back pocket.”
Martinez grinned, showing the dimple in his cheek. “Sometimes you’ve gotta make house calls. Isn’t that right, Doc?”
“Oh, I’m getting nowhere near this one,” I said. “What you do on your house calls is your own business.”
“Maybe wait to sleep with her until after we clear her of murder,” Jack said. “It would look bad for the department.”
“You got it, Sheriff. But seriously, I’d move next door in a heartbeat. It was like a sign from God seeing that For Sale sign.”
“That house is way out of your price range, Martinez,” Jack said.
“Maybe the cat lady’s house will be cheaper. I have to assume it’ll go on the market soon. No one likes to live in a house where someone was murdered.”
“Men are so weird,” Chen said. “You’re making life plans based on the fact that you met a woman one time. One. Time.”
“What can I say? I’m a romantic.”
“Did Abby’s story mesh with Robert and Janet?” I asked.
“Sure did,” Martinez said. “She said they left the house right at five-thirty and then everyone grouped off in their normal groups. She’s said she’s always very aware of where Harrison is because he cornered her one time and she didn’t think she was going to get out of that situation without someone getting hurt. But she’s training for a half-marathon, so she’s needing the extra miles. She runs six days a week. She said she ran with Robert and Janet for about a mile or so and she split off from them when she figured Harrison was far enough in the other direction. She ran another ten miles, so she didn’t get back home for another couple of hours.”
“Can anyone confirm?” Jack asked.
“She says she didn’t see anyone, but she showed us her route. My gut says she’s on the up and up,” Martinez said.
“Your gut kept staring at her tits,” Chen said. “I don’t think your gut is qualified.”
“See if you can find anyone to corroborate,” Jack said. “If either of y’all are interested, we’ve got access to Rosalyn McGowen’s financials and last will and testament.”
“Who are her beneficiaries?” I asked.
“She has no living family, so her beneficiaries are pretty varied. Lots of charities and foundations. It’s her bank accounts that are interesting. She made a killing of the sale of her bakery several years ago. We’re talking multi-millions. But she’s got steady income coming in from somewhere else. Money is being directly deposited into one of her accounts at random intervals. It’s never the same amounts and it’s never the same time. Sometimes she gets deposits every day.”
“How much money?” Martinez asked.
“I haven’t had time to go back farther than a couple of months, but it already totals more than a million dollars.”
Martinez whistled. “She was a rich old lady. Makes you wonder who knew it?”
“She never touched the money,” Jack continued. “Only deposits were being made into that account. No withdrawals. She lived frugally off the money she’d received from the sale of the bakery. Her house had long since been paid for, and her car was paid for. Her only expenses were small monthly bills. She tithed consistently to St. Paul’s every month, and she was a member of a weekly delivery service for pets. I guess someone came to change out cat litter and deliver bags of food. The majority of her expenses went to the grocery store. She spent enough every week to feed a family of ten.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “She was baking for the whole neighborhood and anyone else she passed by. Her having that kind of money already makes it seem less likely someone would be after something as simple as recipes from that laptop.”
“That was my thinking too,” Jack said. “Maybe they thought they could get into her accounts if they got the laptop. But there’s no sign of money being moved around.”
“Maybe they didn’t take her laptop at all. Maybe it’s been in the safe the whole time.”
“I’m waiting for the safe company to call me back with the override code. They received the electronic warrant this morning.”
Jack’s cell phone rang seconds later. The conversation was short and to the point, and Jack wrote down a series of numbers on his notepad. He thanked whoever was on the other line and hung up.
“Let’s see what all the fuss is about,” he said.
“I can understand why she’d have a safe with those security measures with the kind of cash she has,” I said.
“There’s got to be something more to this,” Martinez insisted. “A million bucks worth of deposits over two months period of time doesn’t exactly say uninvolved old lady. She was clearly involved in something. And we didn’t get any reports of her selling her baked goods. Which means she was selling something else.”
“Edna Bright said she thought Mrs. McGowen was a madam because of the unusual hours she kept, coming and going in the middle of the night. It’s just hard to believe the Mrs. McGowen we knew could be someone with such a dark secret.”
“We knew the woman who gave us cookies and lemonade after school,” Jack said. “But we didn’t know her. Money is a powerful motivator for a lot of people. And it’s more than likely the reason she’s dead.”
Jack went to the safe and typed in the override code, and I held my breath as I heard the lock click and the pressurized door open. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see inside the safe. We had a safe at home and we kept cash and our personal papers inside of it. We didn’t keep as much cash as Rosalyn McGowen kept in hers though.
“Holy shit,” Martinez said.
“I did a bust once in Atlanta on a drug dealer that had this much cash in his safe,” Chen said. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
Jack put on a pair of gloves and said, “If you’ll record, Martinez.” And then he pulled out the stacks of bills, neatly bound with a paper wrapping and started counting.
“A hundred thousand even,” Jack said.
I wasn’t as interested in the money he’d pulled out of the safe as I was in the fact that I couldn’t see a laptop. There was a high quality digital camera and a place where it was obvious a laptop would fit.
“I was hoping it would be easy,” Jack said.
“What about the beneficiaries?” I asked.
“There’s no big bulk that goes to any one individual. Don’t get me wrong, she’s left nice chunks of change to different organizations, but nothing that seems suspicious at first glance.” He opened one of the files and read down the list. “She left money to the American Heart Association, the Culinary Institute, the King George Historical Society, the King George Cemetery Association, the Bloody Mary Architects, LLC…”
“The Bloody Mary Architects?” I asked. “What the hell organization is that?”
“Quarter,” three people echoed back at me.
I said a whole bunch of swear words in my head. Whose stupid idea was the quarter jar anyway? “Hell is a place, not a swear word.”
“I’ve never heard of The Bloody Mary Architects,” Jack said. “We’ll have to do a little digging. She’s also left small amounts to various businesses in town, those that are small and owned by friends of hers.”
“What about the house?” I asked, thinking of how bad Janet Selby wanted to get her hooks into it.
Jack flipped through several pages, reading quickly, and then raised his brows. “She left the house to Carl Planter. She says because she knows he’ll do the best job fixing it up for another couple to enjoy as much as she and her husband enjoyed it.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said. “And he was the last person to see her alive.”
“We’ll pay him another visit,” Jack said. “It’s enough to get a warrant to look into his finances. Maybe the construction business isn’t doing so well.”
Jack took the camera out next and handed it over to Martinez. “Why don’t you and Chen see what you can find on here? It might be nothing but cats, but we need to look.”
“It hooks up directly to the computer,” Chen said. “She’d more than likely download everything onto her laptop.”
“You said you didn’t find a phone either?” I asked.
“We found a charger in her car and one plugged in next to her bed. But no phones.”
“Then she’s got her phone and computer linked. Whoever took them either wanted what was on them, or they didn’t want anyone else to see what was on them.”
“Blackmail?” Jack asked, narrowing his eyes in thought. “That would be an interesting twist on things. And it could explain the deposits.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of blackmail,” Martinez said.
“You guys start digging deeper on everyone in the neighborhood and see what you can find with the camera,” Jack said. “I’ll get started on the warrant for Carl’s financials and then we’ll go have another chat with him. And I’ll call in some extra help to see if we can figure out where those deposits are coming from.”
There was only one person Jack called in for work like that. Jack and Ben Carver had been friends for years, but Ben owed Jack his life and he was always willing to use his skills and position in the FBI to help where help was needed. Jack trusted Ben with his life, which was why he was also the man we’d given Malachi’s flash drives to.
The thought of Ben had me thinking about my dad and my run-in with him earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago instead of an hour.
“You got it, Sheriff,” Chen said.
“We’re going on the next twenty-four hours without a lot to show for it,” Jack said. “Let’s start putting some pressure on people.”